Ebony Hardy

HWT Konop is a monospaced (fixed-width) typeface that is also square! Designed by Mark Simonson (Proxima Nova) as square characters that can be arranged vertically or horizontally and in any orientation. To a traditional letterpress job printer, a font like this wouldn’t make much sense. But to a modern letterpress printer it is an unusual and creative design toolkit.

The bold gothic style is reminiscent of gothic wood types but more geometric. Since the characters are meant to be used in any orientation, the usual optical adjustments, such as making verticals thicker than horizontals and making tops smaller than bottoms are set aside. This results in a quirky but charming design.

To provide more design options, Simonson came up with a modular system consisting of three sizes: 12-line, 8-line, and 6-line. These three sizes can be used together like Lego® bricks, with endless arrangements possible. And the sidebearing match so that characters always align when different sizes are used together.

The digital version of Konop replicates the wood type version as much as possible, including the three different size designs. It includes OpenType stylistic sets that allow most characters to be rotated in place, 90° left, 90° right, or 180°, just like the wood type version. Extra characters not available in the wood type version are included with the digital fonts. The set of 3 is priced just $5 more than one single font, so order via “Package Options”

HWT Konop is named for Don Konop, a retired Hamilton Manufacturing employee, who worked from 1959 to 2003. In addition to serving on the Two Rivers Historical Society Board from 2004 to present-day, he was also instrumental as a volunteer in helping with the museum’s move to its current home in 2013.